


our lives are stories waiting to be told

by katsumi



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-09-22 12:19:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 6,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9607343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katsumi/pseuds/katsumi
Summary: Little moments after Scarif (because of course they both live).





	1. space spanish

**Author's Note:**

> A collection of prompts from Tumblr!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Sometimes, Cassian speaks to Jyn in Space Spanish.

Some nights as she lays in Cassian’s bed, about to be pulled under by the riptide of sleep, she hears his voice—soft, lilting—at the edge of her consciousness in a language she does not understand.

 

It sounds like poetry, the gentle cadence, like words made for different worlds than this one so ravaged by war. She lets the rhythm of it carry her under, into pastel dreams of peaceful, quiet places.

 

One night, after a mission that almost turned fatal more times than the human heart should have to bear, she finds that sleep eludes her. She presses her face to his neck, listens to the steady murmurs against her ear.

 

“I wish I could understand,” she whispers, then immediately wishes she hadn’t; perhaps these words aren’t meant for her. “Not that—you don’t have to explain.”

 

His hand drifts down her back, tenderly tracing the curve of her spine. When he speaks, his voice is gentle.

 

“I am reminding myself,” he says, “of the things I have to be thankful for.”

 

She shifts against him, wriggling closer; his skin is soft beneath her fingertips.

 

“Like what?” she asks.

 

“That we did not die today. That we are still in this fight. You.”

 

Warmth spreads through her chest, curls around her fingertips.

 

“Yeah?”

 

He whispers something she cannot understand. Then he bends his neck, brushing his lips against her forehead.

 

“Always, always you.”

 

Something bubbles up in her chest, some bright, fantastic feeling she can’t find the words for. It strikes her as unfair that he can express in two languages what she can’t even manage to say in one. All she can do is press a kiss his throat, just beneath the scratch of his beard.

 

His hand traces back up her spine to tangle in her hair, and she can feel him smile against her skin.

 

“I know,” he murmurs, even though she hasn’t said a word. “I know.”


	2. how dare you put yourself in danger for me?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Jyn is reprimanded for putting the mission at risk to save Cassian's life.

She’s docked for three weeks, forbidden to leave the planet. All things considered, it’s a reasonable punishment: she did disobey orders, commandeer a rebel ship, and gouge a sizable hole in its side in an ill-fated attempt to escape from some TIE fighters.

 

But that it’s reasonable doesn’t mean Jyn won’t complain about it. First off, if anyone’s to blame, Jyn really thinks it ought to be K2, who was the one actually piloting when they got shot. (So much for his “ability to make quick and accurate decisions” unlike humans with their “imprecise and wildly erratic critical reasoning skills”.)

 

Second, isn’t this all just the Empire’s fault? If this had been a standard rescue mission, she would have been fine. The TIE fighters showing up was an unlucky coincidence.

 

And third, they may have lost a ship, but they gained Cassian: bruised and rattled—but decidedly not beheaded or otherwise maimed by his captors—Cassian.

 

Cassian, who has now burst into her barracks barefoot in his white hospital robe, scowling so forcefully that his face is turning purple.

 

"You’re supposed to knock,” says Jyn, slouched across her bed.

 

Cassian marches towards her—more of a grumpy shuffle than a march; his leg got wrenched pretty bad in the escape—and hovers next to her bedside, glaring down at her.

 

“That was stupid,” he yells, even though she’s two feet away. “That was _so stupid_ , Jyn!”

 

“So they’ve told me,” Jyn sighs. “You don’t have to repeat—”

 

“You were supposed to wait for backup! You know how dangerous it was, going in alone?”

 

“Yes, I do. Because they’ve already told me, as I’ve already told you. You can spare me the speech.” She pauses, blinks. “Wait, what the hell are you wearing?”

 

He looks about ready to yell at her some more when he glances down at his robe and starts, like he’s forgotten he’s dressed in a glorified bedsheet.

 

“Oh,” he says. “Uh, I haven’t exactly been discharged yet.”

 

She growls, propping herself up on her elbows. “What?”

 

“I was just sitting there, waiting for the next test, so I—”

 

“So you escaped to come yell at me even though you’re still on bedrest?” she snaps. “You can’t do that!”

 

“I won’t, if you promise youwon’t put yourself in danger to rescue me when someone would have come along to help you if you had just _waited for one hour_!”

 

“I can’t promise that!” she shouts, unexpectedly biting. His stills. “I won’t! It takes seconds to kill someone, Cassian. You really think I was going to just sit on my hands and wait? Is that what you’d do, if our places were reversed?”

 

He deflates, like a leak’s been popped; all the rage seems to blow right out of him.

 

“No,” he murmurs, eyes wide. “You’re right. I couldn’t do that.”

 

“And yet you expect me to?”

 

He bows his head, and while he looks more conflicted than chagrined, Jyn supposes she ought to just take it.

 

“Come on,” she says, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. “Let’s go back to medical.”

 

She grabs his hand, and he shuffles after her, confused. “You don’t need to walk me back.”

 

“I want to make sure you actually go back and get checked out. None of this wandering off.”

 

“…You mean, you want to laugh at me as I walk down public hallways in this thing.”

 

She squeezes his hand, lets her fingers slip through his.

 

“Well, yeah. That too.”


	3. your head in my lap (this was a bad idea)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: one character resting with their head in the other's lap

The suns hang red and swollen in the sky, the heat of them immeasurable. There’s a reason Luke warned them to travel by night, and as much as Jyn had insisted they they would be fine—she lived on Jedha, surely this could be no worse—she regrets it, now, forging across the open desert in daylight. They’ve had to stop in the shade of a particularly large crest of sand to wait out the heat, and she’s pretty sure they’re going to wind up losing more than if they’d just waited.

 

Her companions at least seem unperturbed, for which she is grateful. Chirrut leans back against the sand with an eerily contented smile for someone who surely must be sweating buckets through his robes, and Baze stretches out on his back, his head in Chirrut’s lap. He starts snoring almost instantly.

 

Jyn sits, her muscles aching from the ride, and Cassian takes a seat at her side. His face is flushed, his eyelids heavy, but he gives her a tired smile, a silent reassurance.

 

Jyn frowns. Cassian has every right to an _I told you so_ , and he won’t even use it. Guilt prickles at her skin.

 

Before processing the full implications of the action, Jyn pats at her lap. For a few seconds Cassian just stares at her, blank, but then she cocks her head towards Chirrut and Baze and Cassian’s eyes grow suddenly, almost comically wide.

 

“Oh,” he manages, sounding a little strangled; probably just the heat. “I, err—”

 

“You need to sleep,” Jyn shrugs. “Or you’ll fall off your horse.”

 

Cassian bristles. “I’m not going to—”

 

“Who was on guard last night, me or you?” Jyn asks. He frowns, cornered.

 

“Fine.” He glances down at her lap, quick, back up. “But seriously, I don’t have to—”

 

And yes, there’s a part of Jyn just now realizing that offering to do something because their _married friends_ are doing it has certain implications. But the more he protests, the more uncomfortable it becomes, the more it makes it seem as though Jyn actually thought through this offer. (She really wishes she had thought through this offer.)

 

“Just shut up and sleep,” she growls, slapping her thigh. If she insists that it’s not a big deal, then it’s not a big deal. That’s how these things work.

 

Cassian swallows, the look in his eye guarded and unreadable. Then, to Jyn’s relief, he nods, twisting to his back and laying his head down gently along her leg.

 

Jyn freezes. She was unprepared for the heat that’s suddenly blossomed in her chest, the hyper-awareness of where his body touches hers. He closes his eyes, settles against her, and the frown lines along his mouth smooth out as he relaxes. Some hair falls across his eyes, and Jyn almost reaches out to brush it away.

 

She curls her hand into a fist instead and lets out a long, shaky breath.

 

Forcing herself to look away from him, she notices that Chirrut is smiling beside her. Which is ridiculous, because he shouldn’t be able to see that anything is happening in the first place. She glares at him.

 

Chirrut smiles wider. Then, in what feels like a suspiciously challenging gesture, he reaches down and runs his fingers through Baze’s hair. Baze lets out a small, contented noise—softer than Jyn’s ever heard from him—and shifts against Chirrut in his sleep.

 

Chirrut swivels his head towards Jyn, raising his eyebrows.

 

_I hate you,_ Jyn mouths.

 

Chirrut just laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> on tumblr [here](http://leralynne.tumblr.com/post/157546485544/one-falling-asleep-with-their-head-in-the)


	4. holding hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> pretty self-explanatory based on the title :) prompt from tumblr [here](http://leralynne.tumblr.com/post/157197679089/my-phone-wont-do-the-emoji-but-rebelcap-and)

Cassian only touches her when he thinks they’re about to die.

 

He’s always close, hovering beside her like a shadow, and she’s grown used to him moving in step with her, to knowing he’s only a few steps behind her at all times. But he never crosses those last few inches, not unless he has to. Not unless he thinks it might be the last time he’ll get to.

 

He throws his arms around her waist to brace them both against a rockslide on Rishi. When she takes blasterfire to the hip on Kessel, he cradles her head in his lap on the ride back to Hoth, strokes her forehead with murmurs that sound more like pleas: _everything is going to be fine, Jyn. You’re going to be fine._

 

It’s gotten to the point where to be in his arms is to be in mortal peril, to relive that moment on the beaches of Scarif when she clutched him to her chest and waited for death to take them both.

 

It’s getting ridiculous.

 

So one day, on the way back from a thoroughly innocuous exploratory mission—no combat, no near death, nothing—she reaches across the cockpit of the U-Wing and takes his hand in hers.

 

She means it as a quick, reassuring gesture. She’s not expecting him to grip back, sudden and fierce. He meets her eye, and she swallows at the dark heat she sees there, the quiet desperation.

 

His eyes slip down to their joined hands, as if realizing what he’s done.

 

“Oh,” he says, quiet. “Sorry, I—”

 

Before he can pull away, she clenches her fingers, trapping him.

 

“No,” she says, sounding more confident than she feels. “Don’t be.”

 

She’s not sure what else to say. There are things she wants to say, of course—comforting and inviting things—but she can’t find the right words for them. She squeezes his hand instead.

 

He smiles that soft, rare smile that does strange things to her stomach. When he looks up at her, it’s a little too much: that smile, his hand in hers. She has to tear her eyes away.

 

But she doesn’t pull her hand away. And until they reach the point where he has to pull the ship out of hyperspace, neither does he.


	5. improper security practices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The prompt was "stardust" and instead of going sentimental, I did this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> on tumblr [here](http://leralynne.tumblr.com/post/157745606594/quick-drabble-for-the-rebelcaptainprompts)

“Change your password,” Cassian grouches, slumping into the seat opposite her in the U-Wing cockpit. Jyn doesn’t even look up from where she’s readying her blaster. **  
**

 

“Why?”

 

Cassian flicks the controls, slides his headphones on. “That thing gives you access to all our data files. It needs to be hard to guess.”

 

“Who says it’s not hard to guess?”

 

“Me. I guessed it.”

 

Jyn glares at him, though—and this may say something about their relationship—she doesn’t look all that surprised. “Are you serious? What the hell were you doing, trying to hack my account?”

 

Cassian shoves the headphones over his ears, turns to glare back at her. “Yes. If I can hack your account, anyone can hack your account.”

 

“Oh,” Jyn snarls, “so you were doing me a _favor.”_

 

“Yep.” Cassian sighs. “Jyn, your password can’t be _stardust._ It’s so transparent.”

 

“I added numbers.”

 

“Your birthday. That doesn’t help.”

 

Jyn props her feet up on the control panel, despite the fact that Cassian has told her not to do some fifty times now. He has to physically restrain himself from reaching over and swiping them off.

 

“I can remember it,” she shrugs.

 

Cassian groans. “That’s not the point.”

 

“It’s a lot of the point. Look, nobody’s going to guess it.”

 

_“I guessed it!”_

 

“Yeah, you.” She shrugs, frowning. “But you’re the only one on base who knows that name, so…”

 

This is enough of a surprise that Cassian has to glance over at her; that name—and all the weight associated with it—is so integral to the person she once was, to the person she’s become. It’s hard to imagine her without it.

 

Jyn’s looking studiously at the laces of her boots.

 

“Oh.” Cassian swallows. “Just me?”

 

The corner of her mouth twitches. “Yep.”

 

“Huh.” He pauses. He can read her well enough by now to know when not to press.

 

He clears his throat, switches tactics.

 

“You realize that means I can still hack your account though, right?”

 

“Yeah.” She waves a hand. “But it’s just you. What are you going to do?”

 

He huffs. “I could do plenty.”

 

“You already hacked my account. Did you do anything besides immediately log out and come yell at me to change my password?”

 

“No,” he glowers. “But next time, I might.”

 

She reaches over, and the way she pats his knee hovers somewhere between affectionate and condescending. She walks that line well.

 

“Sure,” she says. “Are we taking off any time soon, or what?”

 

Cassian rolls his eyes, shifts back to the control panel.

 

“Be patient,” he grumbles. “I’m working on it.”

 

When he glances back over at her, quick, he thinks he catches her smile.


	6. there's only one bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> more bedsharing because have you met me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> on tumblr [here](http://leralynne.tumblr.com/post/158041267624/for-the-rebelcaptainprompts-prompt-one-bed)

The last time Jyn shared a room with someone, it wasn’t so much a room as it was a prison cell. A cold, shadowy prison cell with two metal slabs masquerading as beds on either wall and plenty of space between them. **  
**

 

This room is not like that. This room is bright and airy, white walls and soft blue curtains and a single, neatly-pressed bed.

 

And Cassian—standing beside her in the doorway, staring at the bed with something like horror—is not like her former cellmate. For a number of reasons. She won’t go into detail.

 

“Um,” Cassian says, swallowing. Jyn waits for that sentence to finish. It doesn’t.

 

She keeps waiting. She’s not going to break this silence.

 

“I, err—” Cassian tries again. “I guess I should have anticipated this.”

 

“Yeah,” says Jyn. She should have anticipated it, too. It’s probably not a normal thing for people to furnish their extra bedrooms with more than one bed, although Jyn can’t know for sure: it’s been a long time since she’s seen the inside of someone else’s house.

 

“I could ask her if she has more space,” Cassian says, tentative.

 

Jyn rolls her eyes. “No, you can’t.” They’re lucky enough this woman is friendly to the rebellion and willing to harbor them for the night. They can’t start getting pissy about the accommodations.

 

“Yeah,” Cassian agrees. Jyn’s not looking at him—it’s taking some effort—but she can see his shoulders slump out of the corner of her eye.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says, something of a mumble. “I can sleep on the floor.”

 

Jyn bristles on instinct. She’s not sure why, exactly, but the suggestion angers her: she’s a soldier same as him, and what, he thinks her too delicate to handle sleeping in the same bed as a man? That her virtue will be somehow compromised?

 

“No,” Jyn snaps.

 

Cassian twitches, turns to her. “No?”

 

She marches forward, pulls out the sheet from where it’s tucked into the mattress, and lifts herself onto the bed, curling onto her side beneath the covers.

 

“Get in the damn bed, Cassian.”

 

For a moment, nothing. Then she hears his feet along the floor. The light flicks off, and she feels the mattress dip as he lays down beside her.

 

Heat flutters down her spine, sudden and without reasonable cause. She’s faced away from him, squeezed as close to the edge of the mattress as she can make it without falling off, but she can still hear his every breath—loud and strangely uneven. He shifts, and leg brushes against hers.

 

Her heart thuds so forcefully against her ribcage, she swears he probably heard it.

 

“Go to sleep,” she barks, in a (largely unsuccessful) attempt to get her breathing back under control.

 

“I’m trying!”

 

“Try harder.”

 

“Stop talking, then.”

 

“Fine.”

 

“Fine.”

 

Jyn tries, too. But the awareness of Cassian’s body at her back is ever-present, the urge to roll over into that warmth both traitorous and distracting. This was, it turns out, a very bad idea.

 

In the morning, she tells him that it’s his fault she slept so poorly: he snores.

 

(He doesn’t.)

 

In the morning, he shrugs it off, tells her that he slept perfectly well.

 

(The dark circles under his eyes suggest otherwise.)


	7. the one where they adopt a dog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: rebelcaptain + puppies on tumblr [here](http://leralynne.tumblr.com/post/157376639634/yay-prompts-rebelcaptain-with-kittens-or-puppies)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops I got behind on cross-posting over here :)

Jyn doesn’t notice they’ve inadvertently adopted a dog until they’ve made the jump to hyperspace and she realizes the panting noise she hears isn’t coming from her, from being out of breath after the dash to the ship. It’s coming from a grey, shaggy thing curled into a ball by her feet.

 

The dog is small but fierce and growls when she tries to approach it, which she doesn’t appreciate. Accidently or no, they just saved it from a war zone. The thing could at least be grateful.

 

But then Cassian scoops the creature off the ground, curling it to his chest with ease, and the whimpers stop almost instantly. Jyn gapes at him.

 

“How did you do that?”

 

Cassian shrugs, which isn’t an answer. He then turns back to the control panel and proceeds to punch in the coordinates one-handed, the dog tucked against his other arm like this entire situation is perfectly normal.

 

Jyn wants to ask what the hell they’re supposed to do with a dog, but that seems insensitive (albeit, you know, practical). Surely Cassian will have some sort of plan.

 

But then they get back to Hoth, and Cassian sets up a little pillow bed in the corner of their room, and Jyn realizes: _oh, crap, we’ve adopted a dog_.

 

Well really, Cassian’s adopted a dog. He likes to pretend that Rosa belongs to all of them, but Cassian’s the only one she diligently follows down the halls, trotting at his heels. Still, she lets Bodhi scratch her ears and she happily plays fetch with Chirrut. Sometimes she falls asleep in Baze’s lap, leaving him grumpily chained to the spot because he refuses to wake her. She even seems to like K2, gnawing at his gears and generally treating him like a giant dog toy, much to his dismay.

 

Unfortunately, Rosa’s feelings of warmth seem only to extend so far.

 

“Your dog hates me,” Jyn tells Cassian, showing him the mark Rosa’s teeth gouged across her hand.

 

“Our dog,” Cassian reminds her, mild. “Did you put medicine on that?” Without waiting for an answer, Cassian stands to search for the med kit.

 

Jyn folds her arms across her chest. “How is she my dog?”

 

“You walk her. And feed her, and clean up after her.”

 

“Only when you’re not here and I have to. Also, she hates me.”

 

Cassian retakes his seat next to her, reaching for her hand. “She does not.”

 

“She really does.” She hisses at the burn of the gel against her skin. “And I hate her too, for the record.”

 

Cassian’s smiles that soft, barely-there smile.

 

“You really don’t,” he says, leaning forward to brush his lips against her forehead. Which, fine. She won’t argue. He loves the damn thing, and even though she might be terrible at putting it to words, she loves him.

 

So if he now comes with a dog, so be it. She’ll take them both.

 

And if she can look past the whining, and the yelping, and the propensity for peeing on the floor, Rosa’s probably not that terrible. Some nights, when Cassian is off planet and Rosa’s a sniveling mess about it, Jyn drags her into bed and lets her flop down against her stomach. It’s warm, and when Rosa’s little foot isn’t stabbing at Jyn’s pelvis, it’s kind of nice.

 

That doesn’t mean she’s happy about Cassian coming home a day early and finding her curled up in bed with the dog she claims to hate.

 

“She made me,” Jyn gripes as Cassian slides beneath the sheets. “She wouldn’t shut up.”

 

“Okay,” Cassian hums.

 

“I hate sleeping like this. She keeps kicking me.”

 

Cassian nods, tiredly draping his arm across Jyn’s shoulders.

 

“Okay.”

 

Jyn settles against her pillow. Rosa’s still nestled between them, snoring contentedly. Discreetly, Jyn runs her fingers along Rosa’s head, scratches an idle line behind her ears.

 

It would be such a hassle to get out of bed to move her, anyway.


	8. comfort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: one person finds the other one crying
> 
> on tumblr [here](http://leralynne.tumblr.com/post/157243671564/reacting-to-the-other-one-crying-about)

Cassian doesn’t kill unless he has to.

 

With such a deadly accurate shot and so many years serving the rebellion, it’s no secret that his kill count is high. Back to the wall, he will make the choices necessary to see each mission through no matter the cost.

 

That it gets to him every time, that with every soul he takes he loses a sliver of his own, that is a secret. One that Jyn learns early.

 

She finds him in the hull of the ship after a mission that turned bloody faster than anyone had expected. He’s crouched against the wall, staring down at his hands. She watches him for a moment—the ragged rise and fall of his chest, the way his fingers tremble—and considers whether he would want her to turn back, leave him to work through this alone.

 

He might want that. But he might not.

 

She walks forward, crouching down at his feet so her face is level with is. He looks up, eyes wet and hollow, and the quiet steel of the soldier is gone, replaced by a numbness that makes her heart ache.

 

Jyn waits. She digs her fingernails into her palms, and forces herself to hold his gaze, and waits to see if he’ll swipe a hand across his face, to push to his feet and press on.

 

She wouldn’t blame him if he did. She certainly understands the urge to run when things get hard.

 

But Cassian doesn’t leave. He just watches her, very still, and Jyn can see the dawning comprehension slowly clear his eyes, as though he’s only just realizing she’s really there.

 

“I’m sorry,” Jyn whispers. She’s not sure what else to say.

 

Cassian nods. Then his head dips forward, and his shoulders begin to shake, and before Jyn even knows what she’s doing she’s on her knees moving forward, pressing against him. She wraps her arms around him and feels his forehead dip to her shoulder, feels the tremble of his chest flush against hers.

 

His arms hang at his sides, like he can’t quite bring himself to drag her with him into his grief. She pulls him closer, instead, until her arms ache from the force of it.

 

They stay that way for a long time.


	9. space dads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: competition
> 
> on tumblr [here](http://leralynne.tumblr.com/post/159311015434/for-the-rebelcaptainprompts-9-competition)

Jyn throws her tray down with a clatter, slumps into the seat, and stabs at her meal so ferociously, she can hear the echoing twang of metal against metal.

To his credit, Baze doesn’t even look up from his own plate. “Something wrong?”

“Nope,” says Jyn.

Baze nods, clearly deciding to leave it at that. But then Chirrut slides into the seat next to him. Chirrut does not understand the concept of “leaving it at that.”

“Is something bothering you, Jyn?” he asks, reaching over to snag an extra roll from Baze’s plate. (Baze grumbles, but leans back in his seat to give Chirrut space to steal his food.)

“Nope.”

“You’re not sitting with the Captain.”

“Nope.”

She glances over her left shoulder to where Cassian is sitting three tables over, staring down at his food across from a rather nervous-looking Bodhi.

Chirrut pauses, considering. “You’re not speaking to the Captain.”

“There you go,” says Jyn, around a mouthful of meat.

“Why?” asks Baze, looking vaguely alarmed. “Did something happen?”

“We had words,” Jyn offers.

Baze makes a long, strained noise, like he’s trying (and failing) to hold back a sigh.

“You’re going to have to talk to him eventually,” he says.

Jyn just takes an even bigger bite of meat. “No, I don’t.”

“She’s waiting for him to speak first,” Chirrut deduces, breaking Baze’s roll in half.

Baze turns back to her, lifts an eyebrow. Jyn nods.

“That seems…misguided,” says Baze, slow. “Your anger should not be a source of competition.”

Jyn shrugs. Chirrut laughs. Baze looks between them, incredulous.

“Your favorite thing is to dispense advice,” he says to Chirrut, frowning. “And to this, you laugh? Where are your wise words?”

“Taking the day off, apparently.” Chirrut grins, reaching across the table to clutch Jyn’s wrist. “Jyn, I suggest you make prolonged eye contact and then abruptly look away. He’ll come right over.”

Baze gives a flummoxed grunt.

“What?” Chirrut asks, beaming. “I’ve always wanted to try that. But I am, alas, unable to pull off such a manoeuvre, what with not being able to make eye contact and all.”

And as angry as Jyn is, she can’t help but crack a smile at that.

Plus, the advice actually works: after five seconds of eye contact and three minutes of Cassian fidgeting in his seat, he stalks over, hands in his pockets and shoulders slouched.

“Can we talk?” he asks, then jumps as Chirrut slams his fist against the table.

“Yes!” Chirrut whoops.

Cassian blinks, glancing between Chirrut and Jyn with alarm.

It takes every last vestige of strength for Jyn to keep her expression even.

“Yes,” she repeats. “Let’s talk.”

If Cassian sees Jyn slap Chirrut’s lowered palm as they pass, well, he doesn’t mention it.


	10. getting lucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: lucky
> 
> on tumblr [here](http://leralynne.tumblr.com/post/158687193914/for-the-rebelcaptainprompts-prompt-lucky-set-on)

“Be quiet!” Jyn hisses. “I hear something!”

Cassian stills. And then slowly, very slowly, he lifts his lips from Jyn’s collarbone.

A long pause.

“I don’t hear anything,” he murmurs, his stubble prickling at her skin. The hand that’s inched its way beneath her shirt shifts upwards, calloused palm rough against her lower back.

“Footsteps,” Jyn insists, swatting at his head with the hand that had been formerly tangled in his hair. “Someone’s coming.”

“Ah. And you don’t want to be seen together?”

Any attempt to sound wounded on his part is mitigated the slow swipe of his tongue up the column of her throat.

Jyn rolls her eyes. “Not with your hand down my pants, I don’t.”

“My hand’s not down your pants,” says Cassian, reasonably.

“Not yet.”

He chuckles, bites at the skin below her jaw.

“Good point.”

The footsteps—she _knew_  she’d heard them—grow louder, and even Cassian must hear them now because he lifts his head entirely, eyes trained on the supply closet door as though prepared to leap away from her at any moment. (Jyn rather wants to point out that he could just step away from her now and save them all the drama, but she’s too busy listening. Well, listening and staring at the sharp line of Cassian’s jaw, clenched in anticipation.)

But then the steps are fading; whoever it was must have passed them by.

“Okay,” Jyn breathes, tugging at his jacket. “That was lucky.”

Cassian turns back to face her, tilts his head to the side. She thinks, unbidden, that she’ll never get tired of seeing that smile: crooked and sharp, like a flash of light.

“I have a room, you know,” he says. “That locks.”

She gives him a look. “We have, what, ten minutes before the meeting? But if you want to relocate—”

“No, no.” He’s laughing when he pulls her closer; she can feel the rumble of it against her chest. “Sorry. Forgot I was on the clock.”

“Be quiet,” she grouses.

“Hear someone else out there?”

“Cassian, just—” she presses to her tiptoes, slips her arm around his shoulder. “Be quiet.”

He seems happy enough to oblige.


	11. sick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: warmth
> 
> on tumblr [here](http://leralynne.tumblr.com/post/158235566629/for-the-rebelcaptainprompts-prompt-warmth)

The room swims red and purple before her half-closed eyes, the sharp lines of metal given way to rounded edges, blurred shapes. Jyn shifts against the bed and her head throbs, like she’s felt her brain clash against her skull in slow motion.

“Hot,” she manages, though the voice she hears doesn’t sound like her own: choked, tight.

Something moves against her back. And then Cassian’s voice, close to her ear: “What?”

“Hot,” she repeats. Because it’s boiling beneath these blankets, because she can’t breathe with the air in her lungs so—

“Hot, hot!” She rolls her shoulder back and into something hard, hears Cassian yelp.

“That was my nose!”

But his voice sounds far away, and still this heat crackles at her skin. She keeps wriggling, pushing up for relief, and then—mercifully—there it is: a brush of cool air against her skin.

“Okay,” Cassian is saying, “blankets are gone. That better?”

Jyn stares up at the ceiling, tries to bring the metal panels into focus.

“Take them away,” she says, a little firmer, now. “It’s too hot.”

“You’re just going to want them again in an hour,” says Cassian. “When you get cold again.”

She shakes her head, even though it makes her dizzy. “Am not.”

“I’m not having this argument with you again.”

“We haven’t had this argument before.”

“Yes,” he huffs, “we have. A few hours ago. The last time you woke up.”

Jyn remembers this, but only in pieces: Cassian’s hand on her cheek, his voice tight— _it’s okay, I’ve got you, no more blankets, I’ve got you._

A few hours ago? It feels like years.

She moans. “Why won’t this fever just break?”

“Wish I fucking knew,” says Cassian, sharp. Jyn wants to turn to him, to wipe the frown lines she knows she’d find on his face if she only had the strength to open her eyes. She reaches out her hand instead, taps lightly at the bed.

After a moment, his hand closes around hers, and Jyn actually gasps: it’s cold. Shockingly, perfectly cold.

Summoning what strength she can, she tugs his hand up, up, sets his palm against her forehead.

“Yes,” says Cassian, dry. “You do still have a fever.”

“I know that,” Jyn snaps. “It’s just—cold.”

“You’re cold again? Already?”

“No, your hand.” She clutches tighter, managing a quick, tired smile. “Your hand is so cold. Feels good.”

He shifts, and then his other hand—cold, blissfully cold—is cupping her neck, thumb tracing a soft line across her collarbone.

“Better?” he asks.

It is. The cool of his skin has cut through the broil, left her achy and winded, but no longer hot. Just, comfortable. Warm.

“Yeah, it’s better. Stay like that, okay?”

“I have things to do,” he murmurs, but it’s soft, fond. It’s not like he hasn’t been lying at her side for the past however many hours, anyways. “Is this alright? Blankets, no blankets?”

“Just like this,” she says. “Don’t move.”

He exhales, slow.

“Yeah,” he says, quiet. “I wasn’t going to.”


	12. pretending to hate each other

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> on tumblr [here](http://leralynne.tumblr.com/post/158296761624/rebelcaptain-45)

“You need to make it convincing,” Jyn says, loading another round into her blaster with a clean snap. “They have to believe that you hate me, or this plan won’t work.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Cassian mutters from the cockpit, still in the process of punching in the controls.

_“Cassian.”_

“I know the plan, Jyn. I came up with the plan.”

“I’m just saying,” says Jyn, “you have to commit to it.”

“You realize I’ve been doing espionage a lot longer than you, right? Stop doubting that I can sell this.”

Jyn drops into the seat next to him, slaps his blaster against his thigh. “Fine. I just thought we should clear the air first.”

Cassian pauses. “Wait. What are you planning to do?”

“Well,” says Jyn, with a shrug, “in this scenario, you’ve taken me prisoner and I hate your living guts. I feel like it’s within character to punch you in the face.”

Cassian’s not proud of the sputtering sound he makes. He turns to her, eyebrows raised. “You’re going to punch me in the face?”

“I _might_  punch you in the face. To make it convincing. You can punch me back, if you want.”

“I’m not going to _punch you in the face,_ Jyn,” he grumbles. He feels like this should really go without saying.

Clearly, Jyn feels otherwise. “Okay,” she says. “Up to you.”

“You’re impossible,” he says, turning back to the control panel. He catches her grin out of the corner of his eye.

“Exactly. Just like that, only meaner.”

“Stop.”

She doesn’t. But she’s here, talking and smiling, and the secret truth of the matter remains: he’d rather her come along and punch him than go at this without her.

(Later, when she does inevitably punch him, he rethinks this philosophy for just a moment. Because it _fucking hurts._ )


	13. scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: telling each other the stories behind their scars
> 
> on tumblr [here](http://leralynne.tumblr.com/post/158529227174/another-prompt-for-rebelcaptain-telling-each)

The scar zigzags down her side, puckered white along the ridges of her ribs. Cassian’s fingers still the first time they brush over it. With her head on his chest, she can feel his intake of breath.

“That’s nothing,” she says—a reflex, automatic. But she feels softer in the cool glow of this little room, stripped of clothes and shields alike. And Cassian is the first person in a long time with whom lying has felt worse than telling the truth.

She takes a breath.

“It was a long time ago,” she starts. Cassian’s hand sweeps down to trace a line along her bare hip.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he murmurs. She closes her eyes, shifting closer.

“I was six,” she continues. That the words are coming out at all feels remarkable. “Or seven, maybe.”

Cassian’s hand stills again, and Jyn shakes her head, kissing his chest.

“It’s not what you’re thinking. No shootouts, nothing like that. I was just…young and clumsy. I fell.”

Cassian makes the soft sound in his throat that tells her that he’s heard her, that he’s listening, that she has the space to keep talking or stop talking. That it’s up to her.

There are so very many things she loves about this man, but that sound might top the list.

“My father—” She starts, stops, swallows. Starts again: “Papa found me, bloody and screaming. Mama stitched me up, and Papa sang the whole time to try to keep me calm. In the end, I think he cried more than me.”

Cassian finds her hand splayed against his side, slides his fingers through hers.

“I’m glad,” he whispers.

She can already feel treacherous and wet something welling up at the corners of her eyes. She bites down at her lip.

“What?” she asks, the tremor in her voice not quite masked. “Glad that I got hurt? I couldn’t walk right for weeks.”

“I’m glad,” continues Cassian—soft, patient, “that you were so loved.”

Jyn doesn’t say anything. She can’t. She can only lie there like an exposed nerve as Cassian shifts and gently, gently presses his lips to her forehead.

She appreciates that he doesn’t say the words; it would be too much to hear them out loud. But she feels them, knows them to be true.

_You still are._


	14. secrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: family
> 
> on tumblr [here](http://leralynne.tumblr.com/post/159437468534/this-is-going-to-be-a-rough-week-but-i-wanted-to)

She stops cold when she hears it: hushed murmurs from round the corner, her name spoken in a whisper. **  
**

“Yes, but it’s Jyn.”

Cassian’s voice. Dread lurches up Jyn’s spine, cold and infuriating. She knows suspicion like the back of her hand—she spent years with Saw lurking in the shadows, waiting to eavesdrop on her own fate—but this isn’t the same thing. She’s not a burden here, she _knows_ she’s not. Not to Cassian.

Even still, she can’t bring herself to step forward.

“Does she know?” asks a voice she recognizes as Baze’s.

“No,” says Cassian—sharp, frustrated. “No, I don’t think so. So I—”

“I understand,” says Baze. “I will be sure she stays away.”

Jyn swallows. Her chest is tight. She can feel it welling up inside her: that old itch beneath her skin, begging her to run. _Run before they run from you._

But then Cassian says, very quiet: “It’s just—it’s been a long time since I’ve even tried to celebrate someone’s birthday. It’s not like Kay really has one.”

And the whole world stills.

“I am sure she will appreciate the effort,” Baze says, warm. “One hour, that’s what you need?”

“Yeah,” says Cassian. “Thank you.”

She can’t see him, but she can perfectly picture the slight lilt of his smile, the way his hair falls into his eyes when he bows his head. Her skin is aglow, flushed with a dizzying feeling she hasn’t felt since she was a little girl—the urge to run not away from something, but towards it.

With a deep breath, she straightens her shoulders and rounds the corner.

“There you are,” she says, light as she can manage. “Dinner?”

Both men jump. At least Cassian manages to slide his shocked expression back to neutral rather fast; Baze’s eyes remain wide, his mouth dropping open at the sight of her.

“Dinner,” Cassian repeats, clearly grateful for the easy out. “Yes, of course.”

For a good, long moment, she just stands there, staring between them. It should be a simple thing, to throw her arms around them, to make clear to them how much this means. It should be, but it’s not—she’s out of practice with this. With having people who care.

So she just nods, patting Cassian’s arm, letting her palm linger for just a beat longer than necessary. “Lead the way.”

Her birthday’s not for three more days. She can figure out a suitable response by then.

**Author's Note:**

> [leralynne](http://leralynne.tumblr.com) on tumblr


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